It’s a bit mind-bending to realise that everything we know about the scale of the universe comes from people stuck on a tiny rock, peering through glass at dots of light. We can’t exactly pull out a ...

Let’s try a demonstration that we all enjoyed in elementary school. Close one eye, hold out your thumb at arm’s length, and align it with an object on the other side of the room. Without moving your ...

Astronomers have, for the first time, pinned down both the mass and distance of a planet that drifts through the galaxy without a parent star, turning a once purely theoretical class of worlds into a ...

We live in a world defined by inches, feet and miles (or centimeters, meters and kilometers, if you prefer), and it’s not difficult for most of us to comprehend sizes and distances given in these ...

Pasadena, CA — Ohio State University researchers have found a way to measure distances to objects three times farther away in outer space than previously possible, by extending a common measurement ...